nightmares

{let me preface this by stating: This is NOT a true occurrence – this is where the prompt led me, though there have been news stories where this could have been the scenario}

“Sweat beaded on her forehead and she took a shuddering breath. She was so close to being done forever.” How long had she been quivering like this she wondered, as the painful spasms rocked her body once more. The sweat and other substances flowed and dripped off her body. She couldn’t understand why something like this was happening to her…

She thought back to her childhood when she first arrived at the house. She heard everything that was said to her, but having been born mute could never ‘speak for herself,’ so when the nice lady at the home where she lived with the other children told her she was going to a good home, she thought things would change, and that maybe someone could teach her to make the sounds the others made….instead, she remained trapped in a world where only guttural moans and grunts came from her throat.

The new place seemed nice, and the people that lived there: an elderly woman who could barely see or hear, needing an extra set of hands to care for her…..so if nothing else, the girl felt useful. The man that lived there as well, that was a different thing…..he was younger than the old woman, with beady little eyes that watched e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g she did, and sometimes appeared as though he was ill, breathing hard and licking his lips. The man made her nervous, and he did not seem to talk much to anyone, though as she got a little older she quickly learned what a certain look in the eyes meant and made herself scarce so that he would not touch her. He let her get away with avoiding him sometimes, though the smile never reached his eyes when he would only say “I’ll see you later’…..She dreaded those times, because she knew he would come to her bed that night and she wouldn’t be able to breathe when the big sweaty body lay over her…she learned quickly not to fight what the man did because he would make her hurt even more…She did try to avoid it by going to the old woman’s room, hoping for protection, but in the dark of night the old woman neither saw nor heard what happened on the floor beside her bed, and the man would still take what he wanted, then walk her back to her own room and take her once more…

She shuddered at that memory….once a night was bad enough, but having to endure the pawing hands that touched her everywhere inside and out AGAIN made her want to retch, violently in order to empty herself of his touch, much like her body seemed to want to do now….she could smell the metallic sweet odor of blood, knew it to be her own… Pain racked her body once more….the waves of clenching pain kept rolling through her…she took another shuddering breath…..

She had decided she could no longer live in that house…the elderly woman had expired, quite peacefully, some 2 weeks back…now there was nothing to stop the man from touching, or pinching, or fondling, or worse, w-h-e-n-e-v-e-r he wanted. Since she could not speak and had never learned to write, there was no way she could have made anyone else aware of her situation, but she knew she had to leave and get as far away from here as possible…..

The man was gone when she woke that morning, the truck as well…..good, his weekly trip to town, so she had a few hours before he returned….no time to waste. She moved quickly, too quickly it seemed as her body tightened into spasm bringing her to her knees…taking a deep breath she slowly stood up, and picked up the items she had previously stashed and hidden, tied them together in a small bundle, looked around once more, turned to walk out, then stopped. She turned once more, this time moving resolutely toward the stove where she helped herself to several red embers in an old pottery jug. She turned to leave once more and once more her body betrayed her as more shudders racked her slight frame, causing her to drop the jug of embers which rolled away across the floor in every direction….no time to obtain more, she had to get out of there, so she moved towards and through the door, closing it softly behind her….
She moved to the tree line as quickly as her body would permit, as the spasms continued with every movement…she made sure to walk in the stream so that no one could follow her….the icy water numbed her feet causing her slip on the rocks, so it was hard to tell if the pain was because her belly hit a rock, or if it still only came from within her….she tried to hurry out of the water, slipped once more, reached to grab a branch only to find it was a bramble that pulled loose resulting in her landing backwards in the icy stream once more. She stumbled out of the water and headed into the woods where she soon found herself hopelessly disoriented…she did not notice the deeper shadows that yawned open before her, and tumbled deep within the old well…the darkness mingled with the unrelenting pain…the blood poured out of her from several mortal gashes, all the while her body tried to expel itself of something else…..her eyes fluttered closed….her breathing sounding more and more ragged and shallow, sweat pouring from her as her body twisted and contorted in pain….